THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
to identify them at a distance to nautical
eyes. In the middle distance heavily laden
barges are being swept sidewise upstream
by the rushing current; one with oxblood
lateen sails is weighted down to the gun
wale with a cargo of bricks.
Close by comes a wherry with one man
standing at the stern and managing the
long sweeps. Not a whit less dexterous is
he than the Venetian gondolieri.
Now comes upstream a barge with lateen
sails verging from ruddy oxblood to deep
chocolate; another, with a bright-green
stern and brown sails, trailing a green and
yellow dinghy, is just being nosed toward
the docks above. Down the river, wrapped
in a faint haze, cranes, sugar refineries,
and smokestacks with bulbous tops cluster
round the ghostly ashen tower of Lime
house Church. What wonder Whistler
used to come here and drink in inspiration ?
A dock worker off duty, with a pink
shirt, no collar, and a Joseph's-coat woolen
scarf wound jauntily round his throat,
comes out on the veranda with his tumbler
of stout to watch our sketching and to sur
vey the river and what's going on. Arrives
a minute later the landlord, who has come
to tell us we can have our dinner here at
noon, if we like-roast mutton, peas, and
potatoes, and, of course, something with
which to wash it down.
The veranda has just been invaded by
three girls who have come to sketch. The
badges on their coats indicate they are all
from the Shoreditch School. They are
followed by one of the masters and a fel
low student of the male persuasion, and
they are all going to have their lunch
eon of stout, bread and cheese, and pickled
onions.
Now appears a delightful river char
acter, who has come to sit on the chains at
the stern of his barge and watch us. Our
friend of the pink shirt bawls at him that
he'd spoil a good picture. We reply, he's
a necessary part of it. He has a big, round,
gloriously weather-beaten face, with much
the contour of a large potato, and a broad,
bulbous nose that covers most of it, and he
wears an ample brown scarf with great
white dots in clusters.
GEORGE INN BREATHES OF COACH DAYS
Another favorite luncheon refuge from
West End conventionality is on the other
side of the river, the George Inn, in the
Borough High Street, Southwark, but a
short distance from the Surrey end of
London Bridge - a place utterly disre
garded by the average Londoner and rarely
discovered by the visitor in London, how
ever much he may have heard of it.
The George is not easy to find. You
may ask somebody in the neighborhood
where it is and have him stare at you in
amazement, as if you had asked for the
lair of the local griffin. But persevere and
you will eventually get into the old posting
yard, most of which is now filled with lor
ries and vans bringing their loads to a
railway-goods station (see page 194).
There is left only one side and part of
one end of The George; the east side and
the range of stabling at the rear have
given place to the demands of the railway.
But the remnant repays one's search.
It is the only remaining example in Lon
don of the old galleried coaching inn, and
as a coaching terminus it was a very im
portant and busy place as late as 1835,
when as many as eighty coaches and a
dozen carriers' wagons arrived every week
and just as many left. The side still in
tact shows two overhanging galleries and
long ranges of generous-sized, many-paned
windows with a becoming garniture of
geraniums blooming in pots. It is still
exactly the same as it was when it was
rebuilt after Southwark's great fire of
1676.
But if the exterior, or what is left of it,
has faithfully preserved the ancient char
acter and atmosphere, the interior has done
no less. In the "coffee room," as the din
ing room is so often called in old English
ordinaries, the seating space is divided up
into boxes, like those at the Cock, in Fleet
Street, or the Cheshire Cheese, well known
and invariably visited by travelers.
The daily luncheon occupants of these
boxes have been sitting in their same ac
customed places, father and son, these 60
years past. To the certain knowledge of
the landlady, the leather merchants have
been sitting in the end box for the last 50
years; the corn factors have been lunching
in the next box for at least 30 years; the
hop merchants from Kent have been occu
pying the adjacent box for a somewhat
longer period; and so it goes.
The boxes are big, straight-backed ma
hogany pews-very much like some of the
old square family pews with facing seats
in 18th-century churches-and there are
long tables down the middle. On the tops
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